bronzeage
I am a river to my people
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2005
- Posts
- 49,685
Rod Mckuan has left us.
Now, graduate students will have to like him.
Close Watch.
I began by loving nobody.
Then nobody’s face
became the face of many
as I traveled not to Tiburon or Tuscany
but battled back and forth
between the breasts and thighs
of those who fancied for a time
my forelock and my foreskin.
If they could overlook my acne
and the inch I lacked
to carry them to heaven,
I too could deal in charity
forgetting how their faces
always seemed to be the same
and thinking only how their thighs
were rowable and readable
and right for me and wrong for me.
See the stars.
Count them.
Watch the stars go sailing
through the sky.
And as the stars
move through the heavens
preordained and predestined,
so too the faces in the street
file by as if by prearrangement.
2.
Now they’re everywhere,
in cars with tops down,
stopped at red lights
or whizzing by at glider speed
toward some intersection
in their lives
that I’ll not share.
My God,
when seeing them
my car can barely hug the road.
Barefoot and barelimbed on beaches
they hump white waves
and disappear as lovers
in the final feathered plunge.
Can this be a ballgame now
or some new choreography
that makes them leap and limbo
through the sand?
Are they innocent
of what they do to me
or am I meant to be
audience and umpire too?
I’d gladly be their volleyball
and call it victory
each time I bounced against
their beach brown bodies.
Whatever battering a beach ball takes
I’d receive with grace,
and some thanksgiving.
If they covered up
on summer evenings
I’d roam the waterfront at will,
but while they bulge and burst and boast
I stay home for safety’s sake
( my own and theirs ).
Bartok’s blessed the Gramophone
with music of another kind
though even he cannot wall out
my mind’s percussion.
Now, graduate students will have to like him.
Close Watch.
I began by loving nobody.
Then nobody’s face
became the face of many
as I traveled not to Tiburon or Tuscany
but battled back and forth
between the breasts and thighs
of those who fancied for a time
my forelock and my foreskin.
If they could overlook my acne
and the inch I lacked
to carry them to heaven,
I too could deal in charity
forgetting how their faces
always seemed to be the same
and thinking only how their thighs
were rowable and readable
and right for me and wrong for me.
See the stars.
Count them.
Watch the stars go sailing
through the sky.
And as the stars
move through the heavens
preordained and predestined,
so too the faces in the street
file by as if by prearrangement.
2.
Now they’re everywhere,
in cars with tops down,
stopped at red lights
or whizzing by at glider speed
toward some intersection
in their lives
that I’ll not share.
My God,
when seeing them
my car can barely hug the road.
Barefoot and barelimbed on beaches
they hump white waves
and disappear as lovers
in the final feathered plunge.
Can this be a ballgame now
or some new choreography
that makes them leap and limbo
through the sand?
Are they innocent
of what they do to me
or am I meant to be
audience and umpire too?
I’d gladly be their volleyball
and call it victory
each time I bounced against
their beach brown bodies.
Whatever battering a beach ball takes
I’d receive with grace,
and some thanksgiving.
If they covered up
on summer evenings
I’d roam the waterfront at will,
but while they bulge and burst and boast
I stay home for safety’s sake
( my own and theirs ).
Bartok’s blessed the Gramophone
with music of another kind
though even he cannot wall out
my mind’s percussion.
